Friday Freakout: Stemage’s Marbles In Yo Face!!!

I honestly didn’t think this album needed a Friday Freakout write-up from me. I assumed that surely *EVERYONE* in my nerdy musical circles had long since heard about this indefinably EPIC VGM collaboration by now. And then I ran across a friend who hadn’t heard of it. And another one. And another one. =OOOOO SO WUTTEHFUKEVAR!!! HERE GOES NOTHIN’!!!

Where Good Marbles
Go To Die by Stemage & Co.

Just in case you do live under A GIANT ROCK, this album is a Marble Madness remix collab headed by Grant Henry aka Stemage from Metroid Metal. Guest artists include amazingtastic uber talented individuals such as Disasterpeace, Lauren Liebowitz of Descendants of Erdrick, Norg, xoc, Kirby from MM, housethegrate, & VikingGuitar; not to mention AMAZING cover art by Foxxdragon. So yeah, SUPER POWERED ALBUM FTW!!! How you could’ve missed it I DON’T HAVE A FRIKIN’ FRAKIN’ CLUE, MAN!!! But let’s give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you didn’t know all of these incredible artists were a part of it. Or better yet, I’ll extend you the gracious excuse that I initially used when I first heard of the project (before all of the details were announced, of course): I HATE THIS MOTHERF**KIN GAME. Seriously, it’s amazeballs (PUN!!!) hard and may’ve been one of my very first ragequits. The original NES soundtrack didn’t much impress me at the time either, and to be honest, it still doesn’t! But I gave the album a chance anyways and was exposed to this prog-rock-tastic re-imagining of it, and suddenly I was all = ________________!!!!!!!!!!!! <– That’s me NOT HAVING ANY WORDS TO DESCRIBE IT!!! (and you all know how rarely that happens ;3 ). Seriously guys, these dudes and one dudette took this odd, repetitive little soundtrack to this odd, hateful little game and turned it into a VGM masterpiece unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. THE FIRST TRACK BROUGHT ME TO TEARS. REPEATEDLY. AND THE REST MADE ME WANNA BREAK STUFF IN THE BEST OF WAYS (i.e. buying a bunch of Marble Madness cartridges and proceeding to wail on them with a sledgehammer ;3 ). I could easily break down each track movement by movement and expound upon it until this article turns into a book, but that’s just not my way (too lazy/busy/WUTTEHFUKEVAR~ ♥). That and it’s just SO much easier to suggest that you LISTEN TO THE DAMN THING and find out exactly what I’m talking about for yourself. So yeah, go do that. ;) And then promptly let EVERYONE involved know how much you dig it so that they’ll do this again with some other obscure title. As much as I love my Metroid covers and such, it’s a different joy altogether being exposed to a COMPLETE SURPRISEBUTTLOAD OF WIN (giggity) like this. And I want more of it.

But still… F**K MARBLE MADNESS. Damn game is WAY too hard!!!~~~ >__< -flips ALL the insane marbles-